Recently I have been receiving notifications for disconnections. Yesterday the device has been literally disconnected for twelve or more hours. I didn’t have this problem before an update before and my last grows went well, this time…not so much. My internet is solid and my range is not an issue either I have already checked using a speed test on a device that can use both bands 2.4 and 5. Speeds down 240megs, 14megs up.
Attached are the emails I’ve received showing the faults. I’ve also noticed that this device is drifting out of calibration a lot. I have two separate humidity probes in the tent, and one temp probe besides the pulse in the tent. The temp and humidity in the tent during lights on stays at 75f and 67%rh pretty constant. The pulse will not keep that setting. I change the offsets and i. A few hours later they are off by +5 degrees and +7%. I trust my probes in the tent more than I trust the pulse. At this point all the pulse is good for is letting me know if my light is on.
What can be done about this? This is my second pulse unit, first one was sent back because it was faulty out of the box.
Hi H8plow,
I checked our logs, and your wifi signal is really bad, almost unusable. Currently there’s a little firmware bug with wifi signal not showing correctly in the app (should be fixed by tomorrow), but your signal strength is averaging -95 to -80 dbm. See here for what the different dmb levels mean: https://eyesaas.com/wi-fi-signal-strength/
To reduce the amount of disconnects, you can try and boost your signal with a closer router, a wifi repeater / range extender, or selecting an emptier wifi channel. There are wifi channel analyzer apps that help you figure out a good channel. I can link you one if you’d like.
As far as calibration, I’ve reset your offsets (your temperature offset was pretty big). My concern is that you’ve got the Pulse placed under some direct lights, that would cause it to have bad readings. Can you shade it somehow? Please take a look at our placement tips for the Pulse: https://support.getpulse.co/help/where-do-i-place-the-pulse-one. If you’re still having trouble with calibration, I can reach out via phone or email to you and walk you through the correct way to set up the Pulse for highest accuracy, and the correct way to do the calibration procedure.
I wanted to provide you with an update regarding this because it was driving me nuts.
My grow is located in the garage in a Gorilla Tent, distance from my router (Asus RT AC3200) with 200+ megs down and 50 megs up. My wifi is solid, and I mean solid. In the garage I have a smart tv with a 4k firestick so I can watch my grow shows while tending to the ladies. All components I can do speedtests on and they all peg the meter.
Now, you show disconnections and you are absolutely correct and I can confirm this because the device is disconnected from the network for great periods. I’ll stress “your device” is disconnected and now I’m going to tell you why.
With the tent closed up the device is enclosed by heavy mylar and this is preventing a strong wifi signal getting into the tent, if I open the tent I do not see the radar on the home screen indicating a poor signal, and when I refresh the app it doesn’t show me last updated minutes or hours ago.
Your antenna is not sufficient when the device is enclosed in a tent, the tent makes a barrier. To rectify this I had to go out and by a wifi extender and put that inside the tent, not happy about it because of the price this unit costs and it was supposed to work in a tent. Your next version should include a wire antenna that you can run outside of the tent to get a better signal.
Hi h8plow, you can also take off a patch of the mylar. The size of the antenna wouldn’t make a huge difference against the effects of a faraday cage formed by the mylar. Even a small “window” without the metallic surface would let wifi signal make it through.
We had another customer who wanted to use a hotspot in a metal barn to provide wifi, but since the barn was all metal, they couldn’t get any cell service inside of the barn!
I’m not about to remove a section of mylar to improve a signal. Mylar does not allow light to pass through, removing it creates a light leak and that is the last thing you want for a flowering crop.
You can always put a piece of plastic, dark fabric, wood, etc over the gap. The important thing is breaking the faraday cage (caused by the enclose of metal). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage
Very familiar about the faraday cage, I called in and told one of your reps about the issue and he informed me they (Pulse) never heard of this issue before. I have another monitor coming, going to see if they have issues when in a enclosed tent. Pulse might have to be used for seedlings and clones outside of a tent enclosure.
You can also just put your cellphone or laptop in there and see how it does with signal as a way to test things.
Would like to know if the Mylar grow tent is a widespread problem with the Pulse regarding connection to your wi-wi?
I’m currently running a different monitor for the grow tent and it is working fine with no issues. I still have the pulse but I have to use it outside of the tent, I use it to monitor the lung room.
np on mine , its next to motor too (emf) dehumidifier